reaction was to call out, but all she could manage this time was a dry croak. She strained to raise herself up but the harder she tried, the more difficult it became. Her efforts grew progressively weaker. Finally, exhausted, feeling as helpless as a kitten, Molly sank back and closed her eyes.
There was a noise. Molly started. The candles were still burning. She could see them, flickering dimly, and she could smell the tallow. Had she been asleep? she wondered. Perhaps she’d fainted. If so, for how long? It was very cold now, and growing colder by the minute. She shivered and tried to raise her hands to lift the sheet higher, but the simple task eluded her. The walls were behaving very oddly, too, the way they were revolving around her, like a child’s top.
The noise came again, instantly familiar, even in her confused state: footsteps on a wooden floor. As she tried to locate the source of the sound, a dark shape detached itself from the edge of the shadows beyond the reach of the candle glow, and moved slowly towards her.
Hawkwood stared at the skull. It was some kind of monkey. The skull was in a jar on a shelf. The monkey’s eyes looked as if they were on the point of opening, giving the impression that the animal had been sleeping when its head had been removed. The face, although heavily wrinkled, looked strangely young. It was framed by an incongruous cap of wispy reddish hair.
The jar was one of several score that filled the shelves along the right-hand wall. They came in all shapes and sizes, each one labelled. Every single jar was full of cloudy liquid. Suspended in the liquid, like insects trapped in amber, Hawkwood saw a bewildering assortment of objects. There were lizards with two tails and baby crocodiles emerging from eggs. According to the labels, others held brains of deer, of goats and dogs, the eyes of a leopard, the testes of a ram, the foetus of a pig, kittens, mice, snakes, baby sharks, two-headed chickens … All manner of oddities and abnormalities were displayed.
But it wasn’t the freakish animal parts that drew Hawkwood’s eye. He was no anatomist, but during his time as a soldier he’d seen surgeons at work and had been both the victim and beneficiary of their administrations. Similarly, as a Runner he had paid court to coroner’s surgeons like McGregor and Quill and was thus familiar with some of the more gruesome aspects of their work. So he knew what he was looking at. They were human body parts.
Most of the specimens appeared to be internal organs, at least according to the labels: hearts, livers, lungs, bowels, kidneys … the list was extensive. Some of the contents were easily identifiable, like the coils of gut, which bore a strange similarity to empty sausage skins; others he could only guess at. The patina of dust on top of the jars and the faded ink on the labels indicated that they had been on the shelves for some time. The sealant on several of the jars had rotted away, allowing air to intrude and the liquid inside to evaporate. Whatever had been contained within them had long since disintegrated and so bore no resemblance to its original state. Beneath the shelves, a dozen or so jars lay broken, the contents having spilled out across the floor. It was hard to distinguish the remnants of their desiccated contents from the lumps of calcified rodent droppings that littered the floorboards.
“What the hell are these?” Jago whispered.
“Preparations,” Hawkwood said. His eyes moved around the room. In the darkness, he had not seen how large the room was. It occurred to him that an internal wall had probably been removed to create the space, as on the floor beneath. There were more shelves on the opposite wall. They supported another collection of jars. The middle of the room was occupied by an oblong table. He moved towards it. On top were what looked like a butcher’s cutting board and an assortment of basins, both deep and shallow. There were some familiar items lying on top of the butcher’s board. Hand tools. Not the butcher’s tools of the Dog’s cellar, however; these were much more refined. But he’d seen their like before, in the hands of Surgeon Quill. These were medical instruments.
His eyes moved across the tabletop. It took him a moment to notice the difference between the table and the specimen shelves behind him. There was no dust.
The touch on her arm came from nowhere. Molly flinched.
“It’s wearing off,” a voice said. “She’s waking up.”
When she heard the words and realized there were two people in the room with her, the memory of her ordeal at the hands of the Ragg brothers came flooding back. And with the memory came the panic. She saw again the Raggs’ leering faces, felt the wiry strength of them, smelled their rank unwashed bodies, as sour as vomit, as they took turns with her. She remembered, too, the shame she had felt in allowing herself to submit to the degradation in the vain hope that they would spare her further hurt, knowing all the while that these were men without pity, men who derived pleasure from the humiliation of others. Now, when she felt the hands upon her, Molly knew she was about to be subjected to more of the same.
But this time she was not going to give herself to them without a fight.
When she tried to lash out, though, her arms and legs refused to obey. It was as if they belonged to someone else. She felt the sheet being lifted from her body. She looked down and understood immediately why she felt so cold. She was naked.
That was the moment true fear took hold. She tried to cry out, but what emerged was still no more than a feeble croak. Strong hands gripped her shoulders, forcing her down.
“Hold her,” the voice said.
She felt her legs pinioned; then her arms. They were wrapping some kind of binding around her wrists and ankles. Her head snapped to one side and she saw the thick leather straps – and they were being drawn tight.
Molly realized then it wasn’t a bed they were tying her to. It was a table. She continued to struggle, but the more she fought, the tighter the straps were pulled. Held fast, unable to move, she saw for the first time the rest of the room and realized with a jolt of terror that it was neither church nor chapel.
The true nature of her situation struck Molly like an arrow to the heart. She stared around her in horror. From what seemed like a thousand miles away, she heard a voice she recognized dimly as her own, whispering falteringly, “Am I going to die?”
The reply, when it came, was soft spoken and reassuringly calm, almost affectionate.
“No, my dear.
Molly Finn’s screams were already filling the room as Titus Hyde placed the point of the scalpel in the valley between her pale breasts and, using the minimum of pressure, drew the blade down the length of her sternum.
Hawkwood heard Jago mutter a curse under his breath. He turned and followed the upturned, awe-struck gaze.
Bones; too many to count, suspended from an array of ceiling hooks, like withered bats in a dark cave. Femurs, fibulas, ribs, pelvic bones, bones from the feet and bones from the forearm, many with hand, toe and finger bones still connected, all blackened with age and candle soot, hung alongside clavicles and spinal columns; many of them with remnants of muscle and what might have been ragged strips of long-dead flesh still attached.
Hawkwood dragged his gaze away. The second, closer collection of jars also looked to be free of dust. The liquid inside them was a lot cleaner than in the containers on the opposite side of the room. He remembered what McGrigor had told him, that the favoured preservative was spirit of wine. Hawkwood wasn’t about to take a sip to test it. The transparency of the liquid gave him a clear view of the contents. He tried to recall which items had been removed from the Bart’s cadavers and the corpse found suspended over the Fleet. From their colouring and the consistency of the solution, there was little doubt the organs contained within these jars were much more recent additions to the collection.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Jago said, his face ghostly pale. “And we ain’t any nearer finding Molly Finn, or your damned sawbones.”
“No, but the bastard’s been here.” Hawkwood turned, and found he was talking to himself. He left the room and its grisly contents and discovered Jago standing in one of the two doorways on the other side of the cramped landing.
At first glance the room was no different to the others they had looked in: peeling plaster, bare floorboards, boarded-up windows. There was, however, a mattress. On top of the mattress was a heap of soiled bed linen. Next to the mattress was a small table, on which sat a candle-holder and some sulphur sticks. A larger table was set against the wall. On top of it was a chipped basin and jug. Caught by the lantern light, several small beads of moisture glistened at the bottom of the basin. He glanced towards the fireplace. There was grey ash in the hearth.
Hawkwood reached down towards the pile of linen. He straightened. In his hand was a petticoat. A woman’s
